Story of the Day

Investigation into corporate liability for worker deaths

Jun6

Written by:06/06/2013 13:00

A member of the German Parliament, Uwe Kekeritz, has submitted a complaint to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) against three German clothing companies in relation to a fire in a supplier’s factory in Bangladesh in November 2012 which claimed the lives of 112 workers.

Kekeritz claims that KiK, C&A and Karl Rieker were all partially responsible for the deaths at the Tazreen factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which were attributed to insufficient safety precautions and blocked exit routes.

According to the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights and Medico International, Kekeritz was calling on the German National Contact Point to examine whether the companies had breached various OECD Guidelines and to establish to what extent they should assume responsibility towards the victims of the disaster, only a small number of which were said to have received compensation.